Why, you ask?  Because this one just doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever!  And because I had to ask why, myself….

I was sitting in my chair, as I normally do on Sundays.  It was one of the most lazy days I’d had in a very long while and frankly, I was enjoying the heck out of it!  My sister and her daughter were not enjoying it, and the volume on their conversation attested to that.  I’d already had enough of it the day before, but today had relished in my sleep-in and was now engaged in chatting with my friends on Facebook- this made it just a bit easier to ignore.

At some point in the afternoon, my niece asked her mother if she could bathe the dogs, to which she replied emphatically, “No!”  This wasn’t the day for that- they were in the middle of packing for a week-long stay in Vegas with her boyfriend and giving the dogs a bath wasn’t on their To Do list.

I heard the water running.  It stopped.  I heard the cupboard door open and close- the very cupboard where the dog shampoo is kept.  Then, the bathroom door closed.  She was giving them a bath anyway.  Here it comes, I thought, the monster of all arguments.  Time ticked slowly by, but no yelling yet.  Then, she emerged from the bathroom with a wet dog bundled in a towel and a huge smile on her face.  I wasn’t amused because, knowing my sister, my little niece was going to get it sooner or later and when she did, I was going to have to hear the whole thing.

I told her to put the dog outside because it was very hot out there and would dry the dog and warm her up in no time.  This she did and then proceeded to take the other dog into the bathroom for her own washing.  The clean dog scratched at the door, apparently warm and dry enough and suffering already in the desert heat.  I got up and let her in, only to notice that she had some white streaks on her back. 

“You didn’t rinse Chloe enough, you’re gonna have to do it again,” I said loudly.

“What?  I can’t hear you, Auntie,” she said.

I reached down and felt the fur on the dog’s back.  It wasn’t suds…..it was some kind of paint.  Then I remembered that we were missing a lot of something else and maybe that’s what this was.  Whiteout.

“Did you put whiteout on the dog?” I yelled.

“No,” she said. 

This continued for a couple of minutes before I’d had enough.  I told her point blank that there were no dummies in this house and I knew that that was whiteout.  I don’t play with whiteout, her mother doesn’t play with whiteout, so who’s left in the house that might play with whiteout?  She smiled and said that she had a syringe with whiteout in it and maybe the dog got into it and rolled around in it.  Hmm, I said.

Looking at the dog again, I noticed that the whiteout was in a sort of pattern.  So, the dog rolled around in a pattern, did she?  Did she really think that she wouldn’t get caught? 

“Tell me the truth please.  Did you disobey your mother and bathe the dogs, even though she told you not to, to try and cover up the fact that you put whiteout on the dog?”

“No, Auntie, I swear!” she was shaking her head, but still smiling.

From the bedroom, I heard, “Yes, of course she did.”

That was it!  I shook my head, totally disgusted and walked back in to the living room.  I sat in my chair, explained the situation to my friend and stayed there for a few hours more, listening to all of the yelling.  Unbelievable as it is in the first place, though attributed to a kid it wouldn’t be unfathomable, I could have some understanding from a boy of about seven years old.  The fact is, though, that this was a twelve-year-old girl!  And this is just the tip of the iceberg with her.  Wait until you hear some of the other things she does……